Often, at restaurants or other locations such as a consumer's residence, a beverage may be created on-demand from a mixture of ingredients. An advantage of dispensing beverages in this form is that the concentrate containers and water supply typically occupy significantly less space than is otherwise required to store the same volume of beverage in individual containers. Moreover, this dispensing equipment likewise eliminates increased waste formed by the empty individual containers as well as additional transport costs. These and other technological advances have allowed food and beverage vendors to offer more diverse choices to consumers.
Beverages that confer health benefits are increasingly gaining popularity. Such beverages may restore or provide hydration, vitamins, energy, or other ingredient(s) to provide a health benefit. These beverages are now offered in several personalized variations. For example, Gatorade®, commercially available from PepsiCo, has been expanded to include additional flavors, and is also now offered in a reduced calorie version, commercially available as G2®. Furthermore, non-caloric “fitness” beverages, such as Propel®, are also commercially available in different flavors.
The current diverse offerings for such beverages has allowed more individuals to enjoy the benefits of these beverages, however, the formulation of several current beverages is often based on generalizations and still forces consumers to determine which product will benefit them. For example, a consumer may believe that a reduced calorie beverage may assist in weight loss, however, that specific beverage may not be sufficient to sustain the consumer during their aggressive routine workout, and/or may not provide enough hydration. Furthermore, depending on age, sex, weight, and other individual differences, one person may deplete their store of certain electrolytes faster than other electrolytes. Therefore, providing a beverage having predefined amounts of several electrolytes or ingredients, may lead to the individual having too much of one electrolyte while being deficient in another.
Certain prior art systems attempt to remedy these deficiencies by asking user's to provide demographic and personal information. Unfortunately, however, such systems are prone to data entry errors, as well as forcing users to guess certain parameters. Furthermore, a common goal for most athletic individuals is to either lose weight or ensure any weight gain is muscle mass. Thus, reliance on individuals to correctly provide data to personal questions is prone to error. Other systems attempt to base beverage recommendations on genetic data, however, such systems require invasive procedures and the threat of genetic information being spread to those with little regard to its privacy.
Further systems may provide methods for collecting data to personalize beverages, however, such systems generally require users to travel to a secondary location, such as a doctor's office or laboratory to accurately measure individual parameters. Often, these parameters have changed by the time of testing. Furthermore, increased costs associated with multiple sensors, frustration of wearing or locating multiple physiological measuring devices, and/or inaccurate assessment of the user's exertion level may contribute to poor adoption of certain systems. Therefore, improved systems and methods relating to the dispensing of beverages would be desirable.